Numerous nutritional programs have been offered to the public over the years. Most such programs designed for losing weight rely on limiting food intake based on one or more criteria, such as calories, carbohydrates, etc. For example, the Atkins diet (Atkins Nutritionals, Inc.) focuses on severely limiting carbohydrate intake. However, such a restricted diet can have a variety of dangerous side effects, such as an increased risk of heart disease due to a high fat intake.
Another diet program, the South Beach Diet™ (www.southbeachdiet.com) is based on a characterization of carbohydrates, fats and proteins as being “good” or bad”. However, while being more balanced than a program based on a single criteria (e.g., calories), it is somewhat restrictive and does not have a good compliance rate.
The Zone Diet (Zone Labs, Inc., Danvers, Mass.), in comparison, is based on characterizing food in terms of protein, fat and carbohydrate content, and selecting food on the basis of the relative amounts of these three substances. While being more balanced and having a satisfactory compliance rate, it is still somewhat difficult to follow, since it relies heavily on the dieter being capable of estimating what foods to select and how to incorporate the diet into daily and long term programs.
Other types of diet programs rely on the use of appetite suppressants, which are usually stimulants that are not well tolerated by individuals with high blood pressure or other medical conditions that are often associated with obesity. Still other diet programs are based on strict dietary intake by supplying prepackaged food, or are based on behavior modification in a support group setting.
More recently, nutritional programs have been described based on “nutrient density”, which is a term that is unfortunately used inconsistently in the industry, and may be based on calories/nutrients, nutrients/calories, or nutrients/nutrients (Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 82:721-732 (2005). Such a program may be utilized in the online Nutripoints diet program which characterizes foods in six food groups and scores foods based on their “nutritional value” (www.nutripoints.com, Nutripoints, Inc., Carlsbad, Calif.).
In addition to the aforementioned nutritional programs designed to promote and maintain weight loss, the same principles of nutritional control can be applied to other disease states, such as diabetes, heart disease and hypertension. For example, nutrition programs designed to assist individuals suffering from diabetes are well known and often involve a combination of controlling the uptake of specific nutrients, as well as sugar. In another example, nutritional programs to prevent cancer are known to focus on increasing ingestion of anti-oxidants and other vitamins, such as vitamins C and E.
Accordingly, there is an urgent need in the art for a program and associated methodology to permit one to both lose weight, obtain a lifetime of good nutrition, and to alter eating habits in order to maintain weight loss and good health. There is also a need for programs that are designed to prevent and treat other conditions and disease states based on the principals normally associated with nutrition programs for weight loss.